Sociologists have long argued that human relationships are sustained less by intensity and more by regularity. . . . friendships don't end dramatically. No final conversation. No clean rupture. No cinematic closure. Most friendships dissolve through unattended accumulation – postponed calls, exhausting jobs, geographic distance, emotional fatigue, different sleep schedules, different priorities, and different lives unfolding at different speeds.

One day you realise the person who once knew your thoughts now only knows what you accidentally reveal on Instagram stories. And because 'nothing happened', we often deny ourselves the right to grieve it.

Al weken protesteren boeren tegen de nieuwe stikstofplannen van het kabinet. En waar ze eerder nog schouder aan schouder ten strijde trokken, groeit nu de verdeeldheid binnen de…

‘My sister was always thinking of others,’ Parton’s younger sister Stella wrote in a Facebook tribute

Dolly Parton’s younger sister Stella Parton has shared a moving tribute to the late country music singer on Thursday, revealing that Dolly offered to receive experimental cancer drugs “in the hope of helping others in the future” – an act of kindness and generosity that extended until the end of her life.

“My sister was one of the most generous, thoughtful and kind people I’ve ever known,” Stella wrote in a tribute shared on Facebook on Thursday. “What the world saw is exactly who she was.”

Continue reading...

President’s directive stalls for a second time about a week before the first postal ballots are due to be sent out

A federal judge on Thursday halted – at least for the moment – attempts to implement Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting.

The president’s directive stalled for a second time about a week before the first mail ballots are due to be sent out for the rapidly approaching midterm elections. In the US district court, Judge Indira Talwani placed a 14-day hold on the government implementing the order in a case that could be headed back to the supreme court, which on Monday overturned an earlier ruling of hers that had blocked Trump’s order from taking effect.

Continue reading...

Drones and missiles target civilian infrastructure of Kyiv and other cities; car bomb kills Russian serviceman in St Petersburg. What we know on day 1,647

Continue reading...

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

ajpscs posted a photo:

"Once you see it, you can't unsee it”

EXPOSE MORE
the SQUARE
TOKYO DAY WALK
© ajpscs

billy.reeder has added a photo to the pool:

photo-tez has added a photo to the pool:

YOKOHAMA

uchi uchi has added a photo to the pool:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

uchi uchi has added a photo to the pool:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Wired reports that OpenAI is testing a new "Persistent mode" for Codex that would let the agent keep working until explicitly "put to sleep," proactively creating follow-up tasks for itself across sessions and using prior interactions and knowledge of the user to decide what to do next. Code alluding to the feature was spotted in the product's code base, though it has not been rolled out or officially announced yet. From the report: Persistent mode appears in Codex's "reasoning effort" menu, in which users can select the level of computing power, tokens, and time they want to allow for an AI model to "think" before answering a prompt. It seems to be one of OpenAI's most computationally intensive settings. When users have selected Persistent mode, OpenAI's code base reads that Codex will "continue working until put to sleep." That's a stark contrast to currently available modes, which will stop working on a task after a few minutes or hours, even if it's not complete.

In another file in the code base, OpenAI describes a feature within Persistent mode called "proactivity." This appears to be a type of system prompt for agents in Persistent mode, which are told that their work is not done when they finish answering a user's request. Instead, the agent is instructed to proactively create follow-up tasks for itself. The agent is capable of working on those tasks across sessions and using past user interactions and "knowledge of the user" to decide what to work on. It also has a tool to message the user without being asked but is told to send these sparingly.

The instructions also set limits for the agent, according to the file. The agent is told that Persistent mode does not expand what it is allowed to do and that altering anything outside the user's own system requires the user's approval first -- seemingly intended to limit how dangerous a persistent AI agent could be. The file sits in the shared core of Codex rather than in the code specific to the terminal, seeming to suggest the proactivity feature is intended for more than the command line tool.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is imposing new memory-use limits on Android apps as the AI data center boom contributes to a broader memory chip shortage that could leave lower-cost phones with less RAM. Developers will have until February 2027 to meet new thresholds for memory and bitmap usage. To aid developers, Google is adding tools to flag apps that exceed the limits and help prevent slowdowns and crashes. TechCrunch reports: The company explains that the mobile industry is now facing "significant hardware supply constraints that are altering device memory availability," which can then, in turn, affect the consumer's experience with their devices. To address this, Google is now establishing new performance thresholds across several areas, like dynamic memory usage and bitmap usage. In addition, Google is adding code optimization requirements designed to prevent things like app slowdowns and crashes related to performance.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WASHINGTON (ANP/RTR) - De Amerikaanse immigratiedienst ICE koopt 6000 paar handschoenen waarmee agenten elektrische schokken kunnen uitdelen. Met de bestelling is 16,7 miljoen dollar (14,2 miljoen euro) gemoeid. Mensenrechtenorganisaties hadden eerder hun zorgen geuit over de aanschaf.

ICE heeft zonder aanbesteding een contract gesloten met het Amerikaanse bedrijf Compliant Technologies, blijkt uit een melding in een overheidsdatabase. De handschoenen kunnen pijnlijke elektrische schokken geven en zijn bedoeld om het vermogen van een persoon om te reageren tijdelijk te verstoren.

De Amerikaanse burgerrechtenorganisatie ACLU waarschuwt dat agenten hiermee onopvallend ernstige pijn kunnen veroorzaken. Het ministerie van Binnenlandse Veiligheid, waaronder ICE valt, noemt de handschoenen juist een middel voor "afleiding en de-escalatie".

ICE speelt een belangrijke rol in het strengere immigratiebeleid van president Donald Trump. Het optreden van de dienst leidde de afgelopen tijd tot protesten en kritiek van mensenrechtenorganisaties.

I think they tried to exorcise me! For some time now, I've felt that, in a way as cruel and invasive as an exorcism, there's an attempt to strip away everything I love most about the creative process: the time, the failure, the trying, the playing, the experimenting! I can't stand being bombarded anymore with ads and stupid excuses regarding artificial intelligence! It's as if everything and everyone around me is endlessly saying that one of the things I love most in this world, something that saved me and continues to save me every day, is something that needs to be "cast out" of me, of you, of those yet to be born! And that puts me in such a state of fury that I actually seek possession! So, every time they try to exorcise me, I'm seized by an overwhelming urge to try, to fail, to play, and to experiment, taking all the time I need, even if it means taking the longest path in the world! This animation was made just like that: I experimented with and embraced every impulse that arose

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool: